


Tune Up

by Oodles



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Barret and Vincent take care of each other, Canon Compliant, Improper gun safety, M/M, cleaning your friend’s firearm can mean different things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:34:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23464036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oodles/pseuds/Oodles
Summary: a moment of respite at an inn somewhere along their journey...
Relationships: Vincent Valentine/Barret Wallace
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	Tune Up

**Author's Note:**

> (clutches my chest) my rarepair...

_You never take that off_.

Right, that was how they wound up here. Vincent was scolding Barret for never removing his prosthetic. The unnecessary weight of the gun will undoubtedly lead to more permanent damage on the living flesh he still has on that arm, not to mention the strain on his back. Barret insisted that there was no point in removing the artillery attachments while there was still so much fighting to do. 

_I’m not about to get caught without it when we’re always in danger._

Vincent called him paranoid. 

Barret called him a coward.

The tension felt like wire against Vincent’s neck in that moment of silence that came after and the only thing he could think to diffuse it was to offer some kind of compromise. 

“At least let me clean it,” he muttered. “Surely you have fifteen minutes to spare while the others are still awake. Your lack of care for your firearm is appalling.”

Barret laughed at that, “Is this the former Turk I’m hearing right now?” 

And Vincent remained as shocked as he always was when the man was able to switch from stern to cheery in an instant. It started off easy enough, sitting side by side while Vincent tried to get as much of the buildup off Barret’s prosthetic. He wasn’t about to admit how much he enjoyed the monotonous task, but Barret started fidgeting. 

Foot tapping on the hardwood floor of their shared room in this inn, Vincent put his fingertip on Barret’s knee. “Please. You’re shaking me.”

Barret laughed again. “Shit, sorry. Not used to sittin’ still.”

“I’ve noticed,” Vincent replied. “You need something to focus on?”

“Guess so,” Barret said. 

So Vincent pulled up a chair to sit facing Barret, laying the gun across his own thighs, _good lord it’s heavy_ , and told Barret to remove every bit of gear he could reach. 

“You have others to take the watch,” Vincent said. “The weight of this gun alone is going to cause you an early death.”

With a groan, Barret started undoing the straps across his stomach. “If I take it off now, it’ll only be harder to put it back on in the morning. Can’t afford to take that break yet. Gun stays on.”

“Stubborn, as usual,” Vincent muttered, but with less irritation, because he understood that aspect at least. Letting yourself heal a little, only to have to reinjure yourself to fight again. 

He froze up when Barret started undoing Vincent’s cloak. “You think I’m gonna let you get away with being a hypocrite?” 

Vincent didn’t say anything because, oddly, as he felt the cloak slipping from his shoulders, the lack of weight made it _harder_ to speak. He could feel his own scars on display like neon lights strung through his skin. 

“Damn,” Barret said and Vincent just stared hard at his own hands as he wove the cleaning cloth between metal joints, scraping away at the caked on grime Barret had picked up from who knew where. 

Vincent could see Barret reaching for him, ignored it like a blindman, and then froze up all the same when he felt fingertips against a particularly gnarled bit of scar tissue. 

“These are way older than our trip,” Barret said. 

At least he wasn’t fidgeting. Pulling at Vincent’s collar to see how far the scars went. Vincent just hunched over to look closer at the gun now pointed at his abdomen, cleaning it like it was a rare coin he intended to display and not a weapon with bits of dried blood still stuck to it. 

“C’mon,” Barret said, undoing the buttons on Vincent’s shirt. His voice went gentle, the kind of voice you use to calm a wild animal, but Vincent let him anyway. If disarming him was an effective distraction, then so be it. 

Vincent kept cleaning and Barret undressed them both in turn until he had a fistful of Vincent’s hair and they were both naked from the waist up. 

“The fuck you do to your hair to keep it so shiny?” Barret asked, all good cheer like this was nothing significant.

“It’s always like that,” Vincent said. “Even when I do nothing. Something to do with my healing factor, I assume.”

“Too fuckin’ pretty,” Barret said, his fist relaxing, fingers combing through and Vincent _shivered_. 

Again, that tension wrapped around his neck. But if it kept him distracted… 

He let Barret touch his flank, tracing some more of his scars, turning Vincent just a little to see the spiderwebs of healed skin all across his back. Before he knew it, Vincent was clinging to the metal just to stop from shaking as Barret mapped all those lines out. Shoulders up to his ears as Barret pushed his hair aside to look at his neck. 

Vincent was hardly aware that he was pulling Barret’s gun closer until part of the barrel touched his stomach. Barret touched Vincent lighter than he thought possible for such a giant of a man. Fingertips soft down his spine.

“Think I could read these?” Barret asked and even though there was amusement in his voice, his hand asked a different question, settling on Vincent’s waist.

Barret followed the arrow of Vincent hips inward and even though Vincent was starting to _feel_ like a wild animal, he didn’t fight it. He clung to the metal, leaning over it, hair falling into his eyes as he touched his forehead to steel. Barret pulled Vincent’s thighs apart and even though he was shaking, he let Barret in closer. Vincent lifted the metal up off his legs just so Barret could unbutton his pants. 

The feel of skin on skin brought up a sensation like Vincent was about to transform, like his body wasn’t the right shape, like there was suddenly a lethal amount of energy pent up inside him. Barret didn’t ease up, though, catching the bottom of Vincent’s chair with his foot just to haul him closer with a “don’t make it harder than it has to be.”

He still sounded amused, which was the only way Vincent was sure this was real. Only Barret would think to tease Vincent while touching him like he was any other man. Not knowing, or maybe just not caring, that it wasn’t _just_ Vincent in front of him. That as he did this so-very-human thing, Vincent felt it four times over, sinking through each of those buried selves.

Vincent cradled Barret’s gun to his chest as a ringing sounded in his ears and pins and needles swept over his skin. When reality finally snapped back into place, he reached his own hand out to hold onto Barret’s bicep, though he kept his cheek pressed to cool metal. 

Barret laughed into Vincent’s hair. “So I’m not the only one who needs maintenance?”

Vincent was too breathless for a response, though it simmered in his thoughts. 

_You’re going to make me clean your arm twice in one night just to prove a point…_

But he didn’t stop Barret, not even as he knew how idiotic it was to do this with a weapon aimed directly at his heart, or that he was going to get come on the goddamn prosthetic or that his own hand was pulling at the rawest part of Barret’s arm, the part Barret never bothered to care for even as the weight of the gun pulled on it day in and day out. 

He couldn’t stop either of them because he was too busy letting himself dip into the less stable parts of his personality, reveling in the feel of Barret’s calloused palm working him over, slow and steady. Any faster might have broken him, but Barret kept it almost _calm_ , and Vincent briefly lost touch with his anxiety as he felt himself licking the metal his face was nestled against. 

“That’s it,” Barret soothed him through it, which was really too damn kind. 

Vincent didn’t complain, though he wondered if Barret could feel everything going on underneath Vincent’s skin, or if this was only for the human part of him. 

Maybe to Barret, he really _was_ human.

**Author's Note:**

> @oodleswrites on twit


End file.
